Duxbury Braille Charts Available to Download

Disclaimer

All of these braille charts are meant for Summary Reference Only. This means that the charts do not even begin to tell the whole story. For example, braille contractions largely follow pronunciation. The th contraction is used in think, but not in pothole. Its use in pothole would suggest to a braille reader that the th sound is found in pothole. Words starting with “be”, “ded”, “den”, and “der” are especially tricky. It is precisely for this reason that braille production software and braille transcribers are so useful: these rules are very subtle and difficult to master.

Any person producing quality braille to meet contract standards should consult experts and not this or any other braille chart.

Explanation

These charts try to convey as much of the braille rules as possible, while still being relatively simple. All single word contractions which are represented in braille as a single letter (and a few other contractions) in braille are underlined. That means that in order to be contracted in braille, these words must be isolated from other words. You cannot use the “can” contraction in “Duncan”.

The little house symbol is used in several different ways in these tables to reflect different rules and situations. The house symbol shows other text. This symbol is used to show which contractions can be used only in the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Looking at the BANA table, you can see that a “dropped d” in braille means “dis”, “dd” or a period depending on whether it is in the beginning, middle, or end of a braille word. The double house symbol adjacent to punctuation marks stands for text, making it possible to show the opening and closing parenthesis in a single entry. The double house symbol is also used to show how the space before the following braille word is removed after the words “by”, “into”, and “to”.

UEB Braille Chart

At the time of this writing, UEB has been adopted by Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, UK and USA

UEB braille is designed to remove braille ambiguities, and to be closer to the underlying ink print. Nine contractions of BANA and BAUK braille are eliminated: ally, ation, ble, by, com, dd, into, o’clock, and to. Many of the uses of these contraction rules have changed from BANA and/or BAUK braille. The punctuation and composition signs are revamped almost entirely. This symbols list was especially useful in preparing the chart.